From changes to teacher evaluation to the inner workings of the teachers’ unions to new developments in teacher preparation, veteran reporter Stephen Sawchuk and contributing writer Emmanuel Felton keep you up to date on the biggest issues shaping the teaching profession today.

Before the 2010 law, tenured teachers who were "excessed"&mash;that is, lost their current position because of program changes (say a school decided not to offer Spanish anymore, for instance), were guaranteed a new placement. Those teachers were just assigned to an open teaching position in the district, whether or not the principal at the new school wanted them there, in a practice called "force placement."

Since 2010, DPS has been placing excessed teachers on temporary assignments and giving them 12 months to find a position via "mutual consent"—one where the principal and other staff agree to take them on. If unsuccessful after 12 months, those teachers are placed on unpaid leave. Teachers and their unions argue that this process violates the central tenets of tenure, saying it amounts to the same thing as firing teachers without cause or a hearing.

District leaders and principals across the country have argued that "forced placement" too often leads to weak teachers being placed in low-income and minority schools, because these schools are the most likely to experience frequent openings. They argued this practice exacerbates achievement gaps.

Rob Weil, the director of field programs for the American Federation of Teachers, told Sawchuk: "At a minimum, it's a return to the old industrial model, top-down management of schools that didn't work then and isn't going to work now. It's definitely going back to yesterday."

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